Ouachita Baptist University faculty member Dr. Margarita Pintado, assistant professor of Spanish, presented a paper at a Tulane University conference earlier this month. The conference, “Radical Caribbeans/Los Caribes Radicales: Repositioning Caribbean Life,” was hosted in New Orleans by Tulane’s Cuban and Caribbean Studies Institute.

The conference sought to reflect on the current state of Caribbean studies and brought together scholars from a variety of disciplines, such as music, art, literature, film, politics and performance.

Pintado specializes in poetry and minor literature. “My paper explored the ways in which Caribbean writers tend to privilege poetry over prose,” Pintado explained. She participated in a panel of scholars focusing on poetry, prose and politics in 20th century Puerto Rico.

“The research that we do feeds into the teaching, it supports and makes the classroom experience much better for students,” said Dr. Doug Sonheim, chair of Ouachita’s Department of English and Modern Foreign Languages and the Clarence and Bennie Sue Anthony Professor of Bible and Humanities. “We are thrilled that Margarita is here. She is a really good scholar, poet and teacher.”

Pintado, who joined the Ouachita faculty in 2012, holds degrees from the University of Puerto Rico and Emory University. She presented her paper “Reinvención y radicalización del ser insular en La Novelabingo de Manuel Ramos Otero,” or “The reinvention and the radicalization of Caribbean subjectivity in La Novelabingo by Manuel Ramos Otero.”

“I argue that in his novel Ramos Otero intentionally destroys any possibility of a lineal narration by using a poetic language that challenges any ideal of order,” Pintado explained. “Through an innovative and very difficult language, Ramos Otero turns upside down our expectations of what a novel should be while proposing new ways to read the reality of Caribbean subjects.”

For more information on Ouachita’s Department of English and Modern Foreign Languages, contact Dr. Doug Sonheim at sonheimd@obu.edu or (870) 245-5554.